A popular scheme among shady SEOs and marketers is "rank and rent." This is where they choose a major city and a common contracting service (eg, plumbing, carpet cleaning, fence building, home remodeling, etc.).
Then they register domains using generic search terms. They build a website presenting itself as an independent local business. They even go as far as lying on the about us pages claiming years of experience.
They create content on the site, social media profiles, and business listings.
When the site begins to rank well enough to generate leads, they either rent the website to a local contractor and/or sell them the leads.
It sounds helpful, but it's shady. First, they're usually competing with the local contractors for search space. Second, they usually rely heavily on fake Google Business Profiles.
While the latter practice violates Google's guidelines, getting them removed is tough. That's because they pay local residents to "borrow" their home addresses. This allows them to get the verification code sent out by Google to verify addresses.
For our family business, we've even had them report our Google Business Profile on several occasions because we were outranking them. Then they had the gaul to try and rent one of their websites to us.
In the end, the practice is harmful to local contractors and customers who don't realize they going through a middle man.